chroot(1M) System Administration Commands chroot(1M)
chroot - change root directory for a command
/usr/sbin/chroot newroot command
The chroot utility causes command to be executed relative to newroot.
The meaning of any initial slashes (|) in the path names is changed to
newroot for command and any of its child processes. Upon execution,
the initial working directory is newroot.
Notice that redirecting the output of command to a file,
chroot newroot command >x
will create the file x relative to the original root of command, not
the new one.
The new root path name is always relative to the current root. Even if
a chroot is currently in effect, the newroot argument is relative to
the current root of the running process.
This command can be run only by the super-user.
The exit status of chroot is the return value of command.
Example 1: Using the chroot utility.
The chroot utility provides an easy way to extract tar files (see
tar(1)) written with absolute filenames to a different location:
example# cp /usr/sbin/static/tar /tmp
example# dd if=/dev/nrst0 | chroot /tmp tar xvf -
Note that tar is statically linked, so it is not necessary to copy any
shared libraries to the newroot filesystem.
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWcsu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
cd(1), tar(1), chroot(2), ttyname(3C), attributes(5)
Exercise extreme caution when referencing device files in the new root
file system.
References by routines such as ttyname(3C) to stdin, stdout, and stderr
will find that the device associated with the file descriptor is
unknown after chroot is run.
SunOS 5.9 20 Mar 1998 chroot(1M)